Actually, in the proper context, it isn't. In fact, it's pitiful compared to the increase in wealth resulting from focusing on turning the poor country into a rich one. THAT'S the biggest economic story of the last several decades; and to first order, immigration is only relevant to the extent that it facilitates more rapid development of China/India/Rwanda/etc. The US electorate is still more annoyed by predominantly Mexican/Central American illegal immigration than the combination of reverse-mercantilist trade policy, foreign student education and practical training, outsourcing, and tech transfer that the US has deployed to facilitate the development of China, India, and many countries before and after them. The total positive impact of the latter is easily >20x as large as the former, higher-cost policy.

You don't get to discount China/India/etc.'s growth as "inevitable catch-up growth" on one side of the equation, yet fully count it on the other side.

As a consequence, I support reverse-mercantilist trade policy, foreign student education and practical training, outsourcing, and tech transfer, especially for countries like India which both have a lot to gain and are strategically highly aligned with the US (I acknowledge that China is now a more complicated case), to the extent that Americans can continue to bear these things. (Canadians and Australians seem to be fine with continuing these practices indefinitely, while also letting a pretty high number of skilled nonwhite foreigners from poor countries settle permanently.) And I violently oppose the grossly inefficient mass-low-skill-immigration policy that threatens to turn Americans, Germans, and others against the overall project while accomplishing so little.

Wealth to who?

An immigrant will capture a much smaller share of the value they generate, otherwise why use them, than a native born citizen.

This means that while theoretically 'wealth' is increasing it is increasing in such a way that those who are in the position to pay wages keep more of them and those in the position to receive them get much less.

In short then what's the point of an average in a power law distribution which by definition does not have a defined average?

Or to put it even more dumbly would you rather live in a world of 100 units of wealth distributed between the 5 quintiles as [80.0, 16.0, 3.2, 0.64, 0.128] or one of 20 units distributed as [6,5,4,3,2]. For 2/3rds of the people in the world the second would be better.

> An immigrant will capture a much smaller share of the value they generate, otherwise why use them, than a native born citizen.

Why not use them, if they're more qualified?

The only reason why employers can fleece immigrants in US today, is because immigrants are effectively "locked in" - e.g. if you're on H1-B, you can't change employers without going through a bunch of paperwork; and if you get fired, they just kick you out of the country. Which, obviously, means that you can't negotiate from the same position of strength as a native. But remove those, and why do you think an immigrant would demand to be paid any less? We're not stupid.

>But remove those, and why do you think an immigrant would demand to be paid any less? We're not stupid.

Because you're poor. An Indian in India makes 1/20th the wage a US citizen makes in the US. If they get 1/15th you have just received a huge raise and are happy.

You forget that if you live and work in US, your cost of living is also the same as any native. 1/15th would only be attractive to person in India at Indian prices.

Besides, why would someone take 1/15th, if they can have the whole thing? I mean, by a similar logic, you'd expect people in US readily undercut each other at 1/2th, 1/4th etc in a race to the bottom. But we don't.

People in the US have to support a family at US living standards. Indians on the other hand either have their family in India or are used to living in conditions that Americans balk at, multiple people per room, no lawn, one car or less per family.

Listening to the dumps some of my co workers live in I can see why median hourly wages have not increased in the last 40 years.

This is political economy 101. One of Malthus's suggestions for reducing the mortality rate was getting exotic materials to become staples of life so food wouldn't be the limiting factor of population.

Extending that analogy to corporate entities, you imply that anyone with competing offers from Google and local Arco AM/PM Gas Station is better off choosing the latter one, even if Google’s offer is more competitive? Because, after all, Google is likely to extract more wealth out of that careet stint than Arco, and implicitly screw the employee over?

Your confusing the locally optimal choice of a single member within a system to apply to a description of a more globally optimal state of the system overall.

That is not what I wrote. Please re-read it.